Musings Episode 33: Take it Easy…

This past weekend I’ve been mainly focusing on one thing and one thing only – taking it easy, relaxing, and just stepping away from it all.

The thing about being an entrepreneur is, sometimes you can make your own self a little loopy. Driven by your own passions and desires, your thirst for success can be so bad you want it just as bad as you wanna breathe. It can put you in a real state, often for the better, sometimes not so much.

95% of the time this is a great tool to utilize. The other 5% it can try and drown you.

So once again, like last weekend, this morning I get up around 6:45/7:00 a.m. and find myself up an hour early – guess I still haven’t gotten used to the hour fallback. Anyway, soaking in the quietness on a Sunday, eventually I make my way to the den and pop on Netflix. Since recently seeing Iron Man 3 I was up for watching some more of Robert Downey Jr.‘s acting, and stumbled across this one movie from the early 1990’s called “Heart and Souls.”

Long story short it’s a good film, I suggest you check it out. It starts out in the beginning showing 4 people’s lives who are all tied to this one kid being born into the world (Downey Jr.) while they all end up dying at the same time.

There’s this one line in the film that really grabs my attention, so I thought I’d share it with you all. It’s the part where Harrison is arguing with Thomas about stage fright. Thomas delivers the knockout “punch” of a phrase that finally gets Harrison to buck up and be a man – even if he’s a dead man:

Harrison Winslow: Who came up with this ridiculous concept anyway? Resolve your entire life in one bold stroke? What if I fail? And I will. I’ll fail. I’m telling you. I always fail. Then my whole life will be a complete failure.

Thomas Reilly: No offense, Harrison. But you died a failure because you never tried.

That last bit – right there. Harrison died a failure because he never tried.

Instead he worked himself into such a frenzy of nerves everytime he was about to try, the guy literally talked himself out of trying at all.

This is what people have a tendency of doing every day, especially when it comes to the biggest things that count in life.

When it comes to starting a new business, people freak out and think of all the “what if’s” of failure, instead of all the different successes.

If a guy likes a girl and he wants to talk to her his own thoughts stop him because he’s too busy thinking of all the different ways she can reject him – instead of all the different ways she could actually accept him.

A girl who won’t go to the gym because she thinks everyone there will only make fun of her because of her size, instead of just saying “screw everyone else” and doing it for herself, and herself alone.

People continue this over and over again and never once think to learn from the past and break the cycle.

If you never try, you’ll never know…and if you never know, you never grow. If you can take the time out to handle a big project for your boss, or buckle down when it comes to your family, wife/husband or kids, you can do the same when it comes to yourself.

Asking yourself these 4 questions is a good way to push out fear, and take it easy on yourself by not over thinking things. I’ll be expanding on this further tomorrow in my “Make it Mondays” post on my official website. Be sure to drop by and have a look. All it takes is a little bit of practice, every day.

For now, this is what I want you to do:

Take a pen and paper, and think up one thing you’ve had on your mind and have thought about doing but have been too fearful. Take that thought, and ask yourself the four questions above:

What would happen if you did?

What would happen if you didn’t?

What wouldn’t happen if you did?

What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t?

I’m curious to know your answers so after, go ahead and comment below. There’s a really great post on this by Niurka as well, which you can check out after you’re done commenting here.

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18 thoughts on “Musings Episode 33: Take it Easy…”

Hi Rego,
I’ve never really approached and thought of asking these four questions this way, even though at first glance the questions appear as if they are asking the same question, but when I went really deep I uncovered within myself hidden fears. The more I wrote down the more triumphant or liberating it was in my own self-discovery as things started to trigger how my fears are only as conflicting as I imagine them to be, or as liberating as I want to be free, once I read aloud and hear myself, recognizing it’s only me and my choice for my decisions.

This exercise works. I truly appreciate reading about your personal stories, as well as the health articles and input on regoslife.net that has helped me put more into my workout routine.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, it let’s me know in what way I’m helping my readers. The exercise I suggested I’ve also used for myself in the past and still consistently use today. It really helps bring things into perspective and knock out any lingering fears if they try and come up. Thanks again and keep reading, be sure to look out for this Thursday’s “For The Weekenders” post!